There are gay people in the world. I know that is absolutely shocking and unacceptable to many people, but it's true. Also, no matter how often you ban gay marriage, shun the homosexual community, or beat your children for being so much as curious about the same sex, gay people will continue to exist.
There's really only two ways to go about this, people. One option is we round up everyone who has ever even so much has THOUGHT about touching another person of the same sex in a sexual manner and throw them all into a large pit of fire. The other option is to make it legal, and if you don't agree with it, don't engage in it.
I honestly don't understand why certain people in America are so set on making gay marriage illegal. The only thing anyone has been able to present as a reason for why it should be illegal is that it will damage the sanctity of marriage. However, sanctity is completely derived from religion, and marriage by the state (government) has no bearing on whether or not you were married through a religious ceremony, so I fail to see that point.
Another point that people love to use is that "First we let gay people marry, then people are going to start wanted to marry horses next!" That is what we call as straw man argument. Feel free to look it up, but it has no bearing or relevance to this issue, it only seeks to draw attention away from the original point and instead get people to focus on something else, usually a point that is easier to defend against. You know how to make someone who uses that argument sound REALLY dumb? Ask them at which point you think it makes sense to give animals the legal authority to sign a marriage document, as well as grant them a social security number, power of attorney, and next-of-kin rights. Really, I think anyone who uses that argument sounds like a colossal dickbag, mainly because they're putting gay people right next to bestiality. NOT. THE. SAME. THING.
I am 100% in support of gay marriage. However, the issue that we also have right now is that gay marriage and women's rights are two of the biggest points that are being used in our next presidential election. I have an issue with this because it will completely detract from any of the actual plans that each candidate has. Look, if Mitt Romney comes out and says that one of the first things he will do is ban gay marriage forever, but he also lays out a plan to fix the economy that everyone universally agrees will work... that puts me in an awkward position. Honestly, I don't believe in sacrificing your morals, principals, and dignity for the sake of fixing a problem. You can't tell me that we have to lose our humanity and civility in exchange for a future, because that future will end up looking more blonde haired and blue eyed once we start down that path.
Again, gay people aren't going anywhere. Isn't it time that we stop the pointless bickering, allow two human beings to marry each other, and start focusing on REAL issues?
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Aggressive Analysis - Battleship: The Movie: The Video Game (XBOX360)
Let's start off with the painfully obvious here. This is a video game, loosely based on a movie, loosely based on a board game, loosely based on strategic naval warfare. The premise is so loose that I'm surprised the words "BATTLESHIP" don't just fall right off the box art, leaving a blank, nondescript cover that would sum up the game quite nicely.
I've played movie-based games before, and they are rarely fun or enjoyable. Every once in a while you'll get a Spiderman 2 that tries to break the mold and actually be a good game, but for the most part, video games based on movies are so bad that you often find them buried at the bottom of a discount bin within the first month of it's release. There used to also be a standard during the last generation of games that movie based games would be cheaper, almost as if the publisher knew that it was a steaming turd just waiting to defile your console, but those days are long gone. Battleship: The Movie: The Video Game sells for the full priced $60. Wow.
Now, gaming is an expensive habit, so not only am I going to give this a traditional rating, allow me to introduce you to the patented Justin Heins Video Game Valuizer (can be abbreviated as JHVGV if you're an asshole.) How will this work? As we go through the review, starting at $0, I will give or take away value based on my gaming experience, which at the end will help us determine how much I would recommend you pay for a game such as this.
So, without further ado, let's get crackin'!
CONCEPT
When I say Battleship, you will probably either instinctively think of the board game, or of a large naval cruiser. I doubt you'll think of running around on an island with your gun, shooting up aliens, but that's what we have here. Yes, Battleship: The Movie: The Video Game is a FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER. If you ever doubted the people that say FPS games are over-saturating the market, I present to you this game.
The concept for this game is that you fight the ground war against an invading alien army while coordinating naval strikes against their ships and against targets on land. This is an incredibly simple and barebones concept that somehow is thoroughly ruined by a number of design flaws, a lack of combat variation, elimination of actual strategy, bugs in the game, and graphics that just scream "we gave no fucks."
GRAPHICS
Nostalgia is a great thing. When we think back to the video games we played as kids, there was a certain charm to everything. People have often said that the current gaming generation has created more sterilized games that try to hard to be realistic and no longer have the magical spirit that once used to make us grin from ear to ear. Even back to the last generation, with the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, had such fun and charming games as Kingdom Hearts, the original Ratchet and Clank games, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and any of the many 1st party Nintendo games. Now, you're probably wondering why I bring all this up here. You know the one thing about the previous console generation I didn't miss? The graphics.
This game looks like it could probably run on the regular Xbox. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Halo 2 looked better than this game. The grass textures on the ground are flat clumps of green lines that look like they were randomly stapled to the ground. Trees are practically one-dimensional. The actual textures on the rocks, grass, sand, water, and metal (because that's ALL THERE IS TO LOOK AT) look like they were created in MS Paint and slapped on haphazardly.
Despite the lameness of the textures and cutscenes that are mostly wireframe images and never include people, the game lags whenever you respawn, pull up a menu, and during cutscenes. I'd love to know how many memory leaks are in the game's code.
For the naval combat (we'll get to that), ships are fairly well designed, but even when you destroy an enemy ship, you don't actually see it get destroyed, you just get a bright flash of light and it's gone. I don't think they bothered to render damaged ship models, which is one of the laziest fucking things I've ever even thought of in my life.
Enemy design? The standard grunt enemy looks like Cobra Commander. I'm SO not joking. You spend most of the game shooting at Cobra Commander clones. Besides that, there is an orange-colored Cobra Commander clone, and a large beast of an enemy that tries to claw your face off. If you shoot the helmet off the larger enemy, it looks like a cross between the Skaarj and the Kilrathi from the Wing Commander MOVIE. Great, this game now made me think of Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard. Great. I'll be right back after I scrub my brain with a brillo pad.
So, how do we rate the graphics? Well, we need to compare it to other games in its price range, so we're going to go 2/10 on the graphics. The ONLY reason I don't give it a 1 is because there is no texture pop-in (unsurprising, since I'd bet there is only 1 layer of textures for any of the models.)
Value wise, I'm knocking off $5 due to unoriginality in design and general lack of effort. So we're at -$5 now. Not a good sign.
SOUND
As I started to write this section I tried REALLY hard to think back and remember anything remotely interesting or memorable about the sound, and I just can't. There are the sounds of weapons firing, artillery, some occasional grunts from the Skaarjrathi enemies, but nothing else.
There are come occasional musical stings, mainly when you complete a major objective, when you finish a mission, or when you destroy an enemy ship, but they're all very short. I don't think any of the music lasts longer than 30 seconds, even during the CREDIT ROLL.
Voice acting is there, but the lines are all delivery so unenthusiastically that I had to look up online and verify that there weren't just people the studio held at gunpoint and forced to read into a microphone. The sound is just so... lifeless and empty. There might as well not be any sound at all.
I guess I'll rate the sound as 4/10, since it's not horrible, it just doesn't really DO anything. No effect on the value, so we're still at -$5.
STORY
Ah, yes. Let's dive headlong into the stupid, shall we? You play as EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) Officer Mathis, and that's the extend of all the character development. Seriously, there are no other characters. The only other major roles in this story are the GODDAMN SHIPS. You will know the names of all your ships by the end of this because they NEVER STOP TALKING! They will talk to you even when you aren't fighting anything and all the enemy ships have been destroyed, just to let you know they're still there.
So, I said you're an EOD Officer, right? That means you are a military specialist who is there to either dispose or place explosives. That's what you do. However, in this game, for a reason that is never explained at all, you have to coordinate attacks, control the entire naval battle theater, and single-handidly fight off hundreds of enemies. Yes, despite being an EOD tech, you are also capable of dispensing death with several different weapons. Additionally, I guess the Navy just had enough of that stupid "rank" bullshit and just decided to let a fucking bomb tech run the show. You mean to tell me there is NO ONE ranked higher than you around? That can't be right, because you will fight alongside other soldiers occasionally, WHO ARE ALL RANKED OVER YOU.
So, the enemy just decided to show up one day and start shooting people, right in the middle of your training drill. It is your job to travel across all the islands, secure them, and destroy their mother ship. Trust me, it sounds way more exciting than it actually is.
To sum up, the story exists, but has no substance and is riddled with logic holes. I give it a 3/10, and will have to take away another $5 due to poor writing, total lack of character development, and the fact that I've been more engaged by the nutritional facts on a pouch of Kool-Aid than this story. -$10, Battleship. Things aren't looking too good here.
GAMEPLAY
This should really be called "Plant C-4: The Game." Each mission you will no less than 4 times have to plant C-4 on something. Each plant requires you to hold the X button down for about 3-5 seconds, then get away, and watch it blow up in a very unconvincing and boring manner. This actually makes sense, because it's your job, but why is there no mechanic involving this? Why can't I use my infinite supply of semtex to take out enemy troops? Why is disarming ALIEN BOMBS as easy as planting C-4 on a reactor? These are all questions that really take you out of the game, not that you wanted to be in there anyways, mind you.
We have weapon variety, though! You start with a pistol in most levels, but usually can find a Carbine (no brand names on anything, I guess to keep costs down), or a Shotgun, or you can pick up the alien grunt's KRAW weapons, which are basically chainguns. However, completely defying conventional logic, physics, and HOW FUCKING GUNS WORK IN GENERAL, the longer you fire the KRAW, the MORE accurate it becomes. At first we hypothesized it works differently and maybe uses a targeting computer. That was, until we noticed that it OVERHEATS, plus it shakes all over the place as you shoot, meaning that this is just a dumb way the game is trying to pretend its different.
The only other weapon in the game is a Rail Gun, which, is not a rail gun. It just isn't. In initial testing of rail guns the bullet traveled over 7 km and punched clean through a 1/8 inch steel plate. This is not a rail gun, it's a charge-shot sniper rifle which is laughably weak against most enemies (but kills you in 2 shots). Additionally, it suffers from what I call Star Wars Jedi Knight Disruptor Rifle Syndrome (catchy, huh?) where you can only charge shot if you are aiming down the sights. Also, in a funny bit of realization, I have to assume that the Navy in the region I'm in only outfits officers with rifles, shotguns and handguns and has no specialized or heavy ordinance in the area, but they have INFINITE C-4.
Enemies? There are 3 types of enemies, as said earlier. That's it. I don't count the naval ships, because you really don't fight them, you destroy them. They might as well be giant targets. The first enemy is by far the one you'll see the most, which is the Cobra Commander ripoff. Next most common are the Skaarjrathi mentioned earlier, followed by Orange Cobra Commander, who is a sniper equipped with the not-a-railgun gun.
The enemies are very unremarkable, however whoever programmed their artificial intelligence is sure to be a VERY remarkable person. First off, it seems that if the enemy decides they're going to change positions, they will move to the new position before firing, which is odd. It seems they have to hit their mark on the ground before they can start firing again. This is especially funny when you decide to move up on an enemies position at the same time as they move up on you, and you watch as they run past you to take cover and continue aiming where you were at, then process to NOT TURN AROUND as you gun them down 1-by-1 from behind them. I took down 15 enemies with a pistol hiding behind a rock, and they did not turn to face me once.
Enemies also do not at any time throw grenades at you, nor do they make any effort to evade grenades you throw at them. Also, the Cobra Commander enemies do not melee, they just keep shooting at you while you are STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. You can literally whack them in the head with your pistol 4 times, and they will just resume shooting you.
Hit detection and ranged weapons are broken. Headshots only count when they feel like it, and I don't think it has anything to do with hitting them in the head. I think you have a critical hit chance, like a goddamn RPG, since I've shot someone in the leg with my Carbine, only to see their facemask explode. So either I shot them SO HARD in the knee that their head exploded, or area damage is borked. Ranged weapons become neigh useless from ANY range. Your carbine will take over 15 bullets to kill one of the Cobra Commanders if you try shooting at them from more than 10 feet away. Within 5 feet you can drop them in 3-5 bullets.
The game tries to keep you on your toes by having the enemy ships bombard the islands with one of two attacks. One attack is called a "rolling ball of alloy." Basically it's the magnet mines from Half-Life 2, and they explode if they touch you. You see two kinds of this enemy: one that the ships shoot at you and another that is planted in the ground like a mine, except those are blue and take 4x the damage to destroy them.
The other form of artillery the enemy uses? PEGS. Dead serious, they will fire fucking pegs at you, which will either emit electricity (which doesn't hurt you and only slows you down) or will explode, killing you if you are too close. It's almost like someone realized this game was nothing like Battleship and said, "Hey, what can we add to make this seem more like Battleship?" and Jim from accounting said "What if the alien ships fired pegs! Pegs are in Battleship!" And instead of taking him down to the boiler room and beating him until he stops twitching, they decided to put it in the game, because why the fuck not? Another fun part about the enemy artillery, they can shoot this crap at you even if you've destroyed all enemy ships on the map. Fun, huh?
Finally, we have the naval combat, which is predictably boring and awful. In order to take control of the naval fleet, you press LB which brings up a map of the area. Here you can select your ships and tell them to move around or to engage the enemy. Additionally, you can use "Wild Cards" which are dropped by the aliens you kill on foot to power up your ships with things such as radar, improved armor, or missiles. Finally, you can utilized "Gold Cards" to either repair your ships, revive destroyed ships, or ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of a ship.
Taking control of a ship means you will aim at the enemy ship you are engaged with and proceed to mash RT, LT, and RB until it explodes. You do not maneuver, you do not fight multiple ships, you just destroy. This becomes even more hilariously overpowered once you get the Missouri (a battle cruiser) in the fourth mission, which can engage any enemy on the map from practically any position and destroy them in a single salvo. This mode only manages to break up the ground action, but isn't interesting or engaging enough to actually warrant real strategy. It's a sloppily implemented feature only there to pad out the game.
So, got all that? I award this game a 1/10 for gameplay for being boring, plodding, buggy experience. I also deduct $10 from the the value, bringing us down to -$20.
REPLAYABILITY
Let's cut to the chase, there is no multiplayer and no additional modes. The only reason to play this game again is for achievements or trophies, and the single player campaign is ONLY FOUR FUCKING HOURS LONG. I again remind you that this is a full-priced retail game. There is no reason to ever replay this again, 0/10.
Now, one of the ways I like to judge the value of a game is how much time I put into it. Generally, I will rate my value at $2/hour of gameplay if I'm having fun, $1/hour if it's okay, and $.50/hour if it is horrendous. Now to be honest, I did have some fun from this game just laughing at how horrible it is, so we'll split the difference and go $1/hour for 4 hours, so this game recaptures $4, bringing it up to... -$16. Huh.
CONCLUSION
To sum this all up, the game is the worst example of a value FPS game in the modern console era. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since this is from the same development company (Double Helix) that brought us GI Joe: Rise of Cobra and Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters, but this is just offensive. I give this game a 1/10, because it is a perfect example of how NOT to make a movie tie in game, or a first-person shooter, or hell, anything really.
The final value for this game? I feel that you should be PAID to play this game. Don't buy it even if it does end up in the $5 discount bin unless you feel you need to be reminded just how bad games can get.
That's all for this edition of Aggressive Analysis, until next time.
-Justin
I've played movie-based games before, and they are rarely fun or enjoyable. Every once in a while you'll get a Spiderman 2 that tries to break the mold and actually be a good game, but for the most part, video games based on movies are so bad that you often find them buried at the bottom of a discount bin within the first month of it's release. There used to also be a standard during the last generation of games that movie based games would be cheaper, almost as if the publisher knew that it was a steaming turd just waiting to defile your console, but those days are long gone. Battleship: The Movie: The Video Game sells for the full priced $60. Wow.
Now, gaming is an expensive habit, so not only am I going to give this a traditional rating, allow me to introduce you to the patented Justin Heins Video Game Valuizer (can be abbreviated as JHVGV if you're an asshole.) How will this work? As we go through the review, starting at $0, I will give or take away value based on my gaming experience, which at the end will help us determine how much I would recommend you pay for a game such as this.
So, without further ado, let's get crackin'!
CONCEPT
When I say Battleship, you will probably either instinctively think of the board game, or of a large naval cruiser. I doubt you'll think of running around on an island with your gun, shooting up aliens, but that's what we have here. Yes, Battleship: The Movie: The Video Game is a FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER. If you ever doubted the people that say FPS games are over-saturating the market, I present to you this game.
The concept for this game is that you fight the ground war against an invading alien army while coordinating naval strikes against their ships and against targets on land. This is an incredibly simple and barebones concept that somehow is thoroughly ruined by a number of design flaws, a lack of combat variation, elimination of actual strategy, bugs in the game, and graphics that just scream "we gave no fucks."
GRAPHICS
Nostalgia is a great thing. When we think back to the video games we played as kids, there was a certain charm to everything. People have often said that the current gaming generation has created more sterilized games that try to hard to be realistic and no longer have the magical spirit that once used to make us grin from ear to ear. Even back to the last generation, with the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, had such fun and charming games as Kingdom Hearts, the original Ratchet and Clank games, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and any of the many 1st party Nintendo games. Now, you're probably wondering why I bring all this up here. You know the one thing about the previous console generation I didn't miss? The graphics.
This game looks like it could probably run on the regular Xbox. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Halo 2 looked better than this game. The grass textures on the ground are flat clumps of green lines that look like they were randomly stapled to the ground. Trees are practically one-dimensional. The actual textures on the rocks, grass, sand, water, and metal (because that's ALL THERE IS TO LOOK AT) look like they were created in MS Paint and slapped on haphazardly.
Despite the lameness of the textures and cutscenes that are mostly wireframe images and never include people, the game lags whenever you respawn, pull up a menu, and during cutscenes. I'd love to know how many memory leaks are in the game's code.
For the naval combat (we'll get to that), ships are fairly well designed, but even when you destroy an enemy ship, you don't actually see it get destroyed, you just get a bright flash of light and it's gone. I don't think they bothered to render damaged ship models, which is one of the laziest fucking things I've ever even thought of in my life.
Enemy design? The standard grunt enemy looks like Cobra Commander. I'm SO not joking. You spend most of the game shooting at Cobra Commander clones. Besides that, there is an orange-colored Cobra Commander clone, and a large beast of an enemy that tries to claw your face off. If you shoot the helmet off the larger enemy, it looks like a cross between the Skaarj and the Kilrathi from the Wing Commander MOVIE. Great, this game now made me think of Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard. Great. I'll be right back after I scrub my brain with a brillo pad.
So, how do we rate the graphics? Well, we need to compare it to other games in its price range, so we're going to go 2/10 on the graphics. The ONLY reason I don't give it a 1 is because there is no texture pop-in (unsurprising, since I'd bet there is only 1 layer of textures for any of the models.)
Value wise, I'm knocking off $5 due to unoriginality in design and general lack of effort. So we're at -$5 now. Not a good sign.
SOUND
As I started to write this section I tried REALLY hard to think back and remember anything remotely interesting or memorable about the sound, and I just can't. There are the sounds of weapons firing, artillery, some occasional grunts from the Skaarjrathi enemies, but nothing else.
There are come occasional musical stings, mainly when you complete a major objective, when you finish a mission, or when you destroy an enemy ship, but they're all very short. I don't think any of the music lasts longer than 30 seconds, even during the CREDIT ROLL.
Voice acting is there, but the lines are all delivery so unenthusiastically that I had to look up online and verify that there weren't just people the studio held at gunpoint and forced to read into a microphone. The sound is just so... lifeless and empty. There might as well not be any sound at all.
I guess I'll rate the sound as 4/10, since it's not horrible, it just doesn't really DO anything. No effect on the value, so we're still at -$5.
STORY
Ah, yes. Let's dive headlong into the stupid, shall we? You play as EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) Officer Mathis, and that's the extend of all the character development. Seriously, there are no other characters. The only other major roles in this story are the GODDAMN SHIPS. You will know the names of all your ships by the end of this because they NEVER STOP TALKING! They will talk to you even when you aren't fighting anything and all the enemy ships have been destroyed, just to let you know they're still there.
So, I said you're an EOD Officer, right? That means you are a military specialist who is there to either dispose or place explosives. That's what you do. However, in this game, for a reason that is never explained at all, you have to coordinate attacks, control the entire naval battle theater, and single-handidly fight off hundreds of enemies. Yes, despite being an EOD tech, you are also capable of dispensing death with several different weapons. Additionally, I guess the Navy just had enough of that stupid "rank" bullshit and just decided to let a fucking bomb tech run the show. You mean to tell me there is NO ONE ranked higher than you around? That can't be right, because you will fight alongside other soldiers occasionally, WHO ARE ALL RANKED OVER YOU.
So, the enemy just decided to show up one day and start shooting people, right in the middle of your training drill. It is your job to travel across all the islands, secure them, and destroy their mother ship. Trust me, it sounds way more exciting than it actually is.
To sum up, the story exists, but has no substance and is riddled with logic holes. I give it a 3/10, and will have to take away another $5 due to poor writing, total lack of character development, and the fact that I've been more engaged by the nutritional facts on a pouch of Kool-Aid than this story. -$10, Battleship. Things aren't looking too good here.
GAMEPLAY
This should really be called "Plant C-4: The Game." Each mission you will no less than 4 times have to plant C-4 on something. Each plant requires you to hold the X button down for about 3-5 seconds, then get away, and watch it blow up in a very unconvincing and boring manner. This actually makes sense, because it's your job, but why is there no mechanic involving this? Why can't I use my infinite supply of semtex to take out enemy troops? Why is disarming ALIEN BOMBS as easy as planting C-4 on a reactor? These are all questions that really take you out of the game, not that you wanted to be in there anyways, mind you.
We have weapon variety, though! You start with a pistol in most levels, but usually can find a Carbine (no brand names on anything, I guess to keep costs down), or a Shotgun, or you can pick up the alien grunt's KRAW weapons, which are basically chainguns. However, completely defying conventional logic, physics, and HOW FUCKING GUNS WORK IN GENERAL, the longer you fire the KRAW, the MORE accurate it becomes. At first we hypothesized it works differently and maybe uses a targeting computer. That was, until we noticed that it OVERHEATS, plus it shakes all over the place as you shoot, meaning that this is just a dumb way the game is trying to pretend its different.
The only other weapon in the game is a Rail Gun, which, is not a rail gun. It just isn't. In initial testing of rail guns the bullet traveled over 7 km and punched clean through a 1/8 inch steel plate. This is not a rail gun, it's a charge-shot sniper rifle which is laughably weak against most enemies (but kills you in 2 shots). Additionally, it suffers from what I call Star Wars Jedi Knight Disruptor Rifle Syndrome (catchy, huh?) where you can only charge shot if you are aiming down the sights. Also, in a funny bit of realization, I have to assume that the Navy in the region I'm in only outfits officers with rifles, shotguns and handguns and has no specialized or heavy ordinance in the area, but they have INFINITE C-4.
Enemies? There are 3 types of enemies, as said earlier. That's it. I don't count the naval ships, because you really don't fight them, you destroy them. They might as well be giant targets. The first enemy is by far the one you'll see the most, which is the Cobra Commander ripoff. Next most common are the Skaarjrathi mentioned earlier, followed by Orange Cobra Commander, who is a sniper equipped with the not-a-railgun gun.
The enemies are very unremarkable, however whoever programmed their artificial intelligence is sure to be a VERY remarkable person. First off, it seems that if the enemy decides they're going to change positions, they will move to the new position before firing, which is odd. It seems they have to hit their mark on the ground before they can start firing again. This is especially funny when you decide to move up on an enemies position at the same time as they move up on you, and you watch as they run past you to take cover and continue aiming where you were at, then process to NOT TURN AROUND as you gun them down 1-by-1 from behind them. I took down 15 enemies with a pistol hiding behind a rock, and they did not turn to face me once.
Enemies also do not at any time throw grenades at you, nor do they make any effort to evade grenades you throw at them. Also, the Cobra Commander enemies do not melee, they just keep shooting at you while you are STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. You can literally whack them in the head with your pistol 4 times, and they will just resume shooting you.
Hit detection and ranged weapons are broken. Headshots only count when they feel like it, and I don't think it has anything to do with hitting them in the head. I think you have a critical hit chance, like a goddamn RPG, since I've shot someone in the leg with my Carbine, only to see their facemask explode. So either I shot them SO HARD in the knee that their head exploded, or area damage is borked. Ranged weapons become neigh useless from ANY range. Your carbine will take over 15 bullets to kill one of the Cobra Commanders if you try shooting at them from more than 10 feet away. Within 5 feet you can drop them in 3-5 bullets.
The game tries to keep you on your toes by having the enemy ships bombard the islands with one of two attacks. One attack is called a "rolling ball of alloy." Basically it's the magnet mines from Half-Life 2, and they explode if they touch you. You see two kinds of this enemy: one that the ships shoot at you and another that is planted in the ground like a mine, except those are blue and take 4x the damage to destroy them.
The other form of artillery the enemy uses? PEGS. Dead serious, they will fire fucking pegs at you, which will either emit electricity (which doesn't hurt you and only slows you down) or will explode, killing you if you are too close. It's almost like someone realized this game was nothing like Battleship and said, "Hey, what can we add to make this seem more like Battleship?" and Jim from accounting said "What if the alien ships fired pegs! Pegs are in Battleship!" And instead of taking him down to the boiler room and beating him until he stops twitching, they decided to put it in the game, because why the fuck not? Another fun part about the enemy artillery, they can shoot this crap at you even if you've destroyed all enemy ships on the map. Fun, huh?
Finally, we have the naval combat, which is predictably boring and awful. In order to take control of the naval fleet, you press LB which brings up a map of the area. Here you can select your ships and tell them to move around or to engage the enemy. Additionally, you can use "Wild Cards" which are dropped by the aliens you kill on foot to power up your ships with things such as radar, improved armor, or missiles. Finally, you can utilized "Gold Cards" to either repair your ships, revive destroyed ships, or ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of a ship.
Taking control of a ship means you will aim at the enemy ship you are engaged with and proceed to mash RT, LT, and RB until it explodes. You do not maneuver, you do not fight multiple ships, you just destroy. This becomes even more hilariously overpowered once you get the Missouri (a battle cruiser) in the fourth mission, which can engage any enemy on the map from practically any position and destroy them in a single salvo. This mode only manages to break up the ground action, but isn't interesting or engaging enough to actually warrant real strategy. It's a sloppily implemented feature only there to pad out the game.
So, got all that? I award this game a 1/10 for gameplay for being boring, plodding, buggy experience. I also deduct $10 from the the value, bringing us down to -$20.
REPLAYABILITY
Let's cut to the chase, there is no multiplayer and no additional modes. The only reason to play this game again is for achievements or trophies, and the single player campaign is ONLY FOUR FUCKING HOURS LONG. I again remind you that this is a full-priced retail game. There is no reason to ever replay this again, 0/10.
Now, one of the ways I like to judge the value of a game is how much time I put into it. Generally, I will rate my value at $2/hour of gameplay if I'm having fun, $1/hour if it's okay, and $.50/hour if it is horrendous. Now to be honest, I did have some fun from this game just laughing at how horrible it is, so we'll split the difference and go $1/hour for 4 hours, so this game recaptures $4, bringing it up to... -$16. Huh.
CONCLUSION
To sum this all up, the game is the worst example of a value FPS game in the modern console era. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since this is from the same development company (Double Helix) that brought us GI Joe: Rise of Cobra and Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters, but this is just offensive. I give this game a 1/10, because it is a perfect example of how NOT to make a movie tie in game, or a first-person shooter, or hell, anything really.
The final value for this game? I feel that you should be PAID to play this game. Don't buy it even if it does end up in the $5 discount bin unless you feel you need to be reminded just how bad games can get.
That's all for this edition of Aggressive Analysis, until next time.
-Justin
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